Saying youth sports in New Canaan must be treated equally—in terms of field access and use, for example—town officials on Monday night talked about setting uniform standards for all programs and making mandatory a newly calculated, across-the-board per-player fee for fields upkeep and upgrades.
New Canaan in divvying up coveted—and, with youth sports themselves expanding, increasingly scarce—access to playing fields at public parks, is “at the mercy” of groups that may stake a claim by funding capital improvements, Selectman Nick Williams said at the Youth Sports Committee meeting.
Members of the Youth Sports Committee at its Sept. 15 meeting at NCPD: Doug Perlman, Tara Clough and Sally Campbell. Credit: Michael Dinan
“That’s got to stop,” Williams said at the meeting, held in the Training Room at the New Canaan Police Department.
“As a town we need to start telling the sports, ‘First of all, you’ll all be treated equally at the outset, and you’ll all be charged the same fee and by the way, girls and boys, same fee. And then we’ll move on from that. If you want to do a fields project, great. But this is separate and above that.’ ”
The comments came in the context of a larger discussion about ways that the committee—established two years ago by the Board of Selectmen—could gain insight and, insofar as it means all groups are treated equally, oversight of New Canaan’s well-established, involved and successful youth sports programs, many of which (football, soccer, lacrosse, baseball and softball, for example) are operated by private nonprofit groups. Committee members include Sally Campbell, Tara Clough, Chris Robustelli (elected chairman on Monday), Ben Sibbett and Doug Perlman. Nonvoting members include NCHS Athletic Director Jay Egan, Recreation Director Steve Benko and DPW Parks Superintendent John Howe.
Sally Campbell, Jay Egan and Ben Sibbett at the Sept. 15 meeting of the Youth Sports Committee. Credit: Michael Dinan
Each year, said Williams, who ran the meeting, the sports groups must “demonstrate the best corporate governance practices, transparent financials, sources and uses of funding, coaching methods.”
“Look, let’s be clear, folks. One of the reasons this committee exists is we had some well-publicized—and I mean well-publicized—incidents in this town, between burning trophies, we had a well-known sexual discrimination suit in one of our sports. So we’re not perfect. Other towns suffer that, too, but we’ve had some well-publicized ones. And I was certainly, as a selectman and prior to that being the chairman of the Board of Education, saying, ‘What is going on here? Can’t you get a handle on these sports?’ We’re not trying to run these sports. We are, however, as a town, setting forth requirements that these sports must demonstrate to the best of their ability to this committee.”
Though the committee has gained insight into the finances of youth sports programs in New Canaan—and in cases such as with New Canaan Baseball and Softball, Benko and Howe said, the private groups have given generously for fields prep and upkeep—the funding of playing fields improvements and upkeep may have cost the town some control in other areas, officials said.
Youth Sports Committee Chair Chris Robustelli and Recreation Director Steve Benko at the YSC’s Sept. 15, 2014 meeting. Credit: Michael Dinan
For example, Howe said, receiving funds from the private groups for upkeep has meant that there’s been no reason to seek an increased allocation from the town.
Williams said: “The bottom line is, we shouldn’t be relying on voluntary contributions for the town to do what the town should be doing itself. I feel strongly about that. There are certain things that the town should pay for, as a town.”
The committee has plenty of work ahead of it.
At the meeting, members talked about how to bolster an online fields reservation system while ensuring parity among multiple competing schedules, how to get the word out about the committee’s own purpose and how to open lines of communication with youth sports groups whose boards often turn over frequently (or, problematically, not frequently enough) as well as participating parents.
Sibbett said that when a problem arises in some sport, “there is no sort of way that it gets communicated in an organized fashion.”
“So once the committee has a profile, then we can create some sort of centralized way for people to call up and say, ‘Coach X is a real problem.’ ”
Williams added: “And Coach X isn’t being disciplined by his organization because Coach X is the vice president of that organization. We’ve had that happen.”
Benko said more control is needed over the expansion of some youth sports programs, because with each new team or league, the already difficult scheduling of practices and games on town playing fields becomes even trickier.
Perlman said the committee, as it develops a new fee structure, must keep in mind that parents typically see fields use through the sports in which their own kids participate.
“So if sport X is paying $20 a head and sport Y gets the big field, and family Z doesn’t have kids playing that sport, we’re going to hear about it,” Perlman said.
Egan said that he, together with Benko and Howe form a separate “Fields Committee” that’s charged by Town Charter allocating use and maintenance of fields. The group planned to circle back to the full Youth Sports Committee at its next meeting (two months away) with a recommendation on a new, mandatory fee for youth sports groups, Egan said.
Selectman Beth Jones, who was a guest at the meeting and has raised questions in past public meetings about the committee, urged the group to keep proper minutes and notify the public of its meetings, as required by law.